ABB India wins order to install solar inverters at 750 railway stations
New Delhi: ABB India, the local arm of the Swedish-Swiss engineering giant ABB, today announced it will provide solar inverters to 750 railway stations in north India to reduce dependence on traditional sources of energy. The stations are located in the busy northern Indian part of the network, one of the most used railway corridors in the world.
“ABB solar inverters for this project vary between 5kW to 50kW in performance depending on the size of the station. They will be part of the solar installations being set up by Azure Power,” the company said in a statement.
Indian Railways carries more than 8 billion passengers annually. The transporter moves over 12,500 trains and 23 million passengers daily, equivalent to the population of Australia. The company operates more than 8,000 stations across the country and is looking at building solar plants to supply clean power for their operations.
ABB set up its solar inverter manufacturing facility in India in 2012 and claims it contributes to approximately 40 percent of the country’s solar installations. ABB solar inverters are in use in the transportation sector.
Tropical northern India receives abundant sunlight with 300 sunny days and solar power is a natural alternative to conventional electricity, much of which is generated using coal.
The Indian Railways is working on a “net zero energy concept” where power is generated and consumed within the operations. As per reports, the Indian Railways has a current renewable energy generation capacity of 36 MW and plans to ramp it up to 1,000 MW.
ABB operates in over 100 countries with about 132,000 employees.
Source: energy.economictimes.indiatimes
